Engaging with families about medicines #RCPCH17
At this year’s RCPCH annual conference in Birmingham (24th-26th May 2017) parents from the children’s charity WellChild will be leading a workshop about the benefits of working with parents / carers to ensure the best outcomes for young patients.
Parent representatives will share their perspectives on the risks and challenges faced in caring for their children with complex needs, at home and in hospital. The workshop will address how parents and doctors can work together to overcome medication safety challenges through multi-professional collaboration and improved engagement with families.
Prior to the session, a wider group of parents representatives from WellChild were asked to feed their ideas and experiences into this session. A series of questions were asked to WellChild’s online parent group. Through this method, responses and opinions from a wide spread national group were collected.
The questions asked to the parent group were:
1) What are your issues / challenges you face in getting your child’s medicines at home?
2) What are the challenges to medicine safety and caring for your child at home?
3) What solutions can you think of that would help?
4) What would you like to share with your child’s doctor if you had the opportunity?
The responses to these questions were collated and three key themes were developed which are to be discussed at the conference.
The session on 25th May at the RCPCH conference builds upon previous collaborative work with the WellChild parent group, including a workshop at the London School of Paediatrics Conference in January 2017.
Following the RCPCH conference, there are plans to continue the medicines safety agenda through developing a wider ‘medicines safety strategy’. This strategy will include the formation of a working group, the development of a statement of intent – which health care professionals can sign up to, and a plan to develop practical solutions to the issues most frequently raised by parents in relation to issues with medicines. It is hoped that this work will lead to future improvements in medicines safety at home.
Follow us on twitter @MedsForChildren for lives updates from the conference session – Thursday 25th May 11.45 – 13.00